StrataGold cuts high grade in Guyana

Vancouver — StrataGold (SGV-T) has intersected significant gold mineralization on the Tassawini project in northern Guyana.

Hole SD003 on the West zone intersected 41 metres (from a depth of 22 metres) grading 21 grams gold per tonne on an uncut basis, or 6.8 grams gold with high-grade assays cut to 34.3 grams gold. Results from the core hole were heavily influenced by a 1.5-metre interval of 437 grams gold.

Hole 2 also encountered mineralized saprolite (heavily weathered bedrock) from surface to a depth of 49 metres, averaging 4.3 grams gold on a cut basis. Drilling has shown the saprolite horizon extending to a depth of about 50 metres in the Tassawini West zone.

For 2005, the company has budgeted $4 million in exploration for Tassawini, including about 8,000 metres of core drilling and 14,000 metres of reverse-circulation (RC) drilling to confirm past holes and test new targets.

“Results from our RC ongoing drilling south of the Tassawini East and West open pits have extended the known strike length of this mineralization by an additional two-hundred metres to the southwest of where we are now diamond drilling,” says William Yeomans, StrataGold’s general manager of exploration for South America. “RC drilling has extended the strike length of our new discovery at Black Ridge six-hundred metres, and this favourable exploration target will also be subject to diamond drilling with the arrival of a third drill rig on the property.”

The deposit was mined from 1907 to 1914, during which time it produced 11,000 oz. gold from the weathered bedrock. Further exploration through the mid-1980s and 1990s outlined the current mineralized zones.

Gold at Tassawini is hosted by sheared and mylonitic sediments in contact with mafic volcanics. Geological analysis suggests the region shares its origin with the far-removed metasedimentary Birimian terrane in West Africa. Thin section work on samples from hole SD001 identified the gold host-rock as a manganese-bearing gondonite, which hosts many gold deposits in Ghana.

StrataGold was spun off from Expatriate Resources, now Yukon Zinc (yzc-v), in 2003 to hold all the predecessor’s gold projects. Besides Tassawini, which was acquired in mid-2004, StrataGold holds several precious metals projects in the Yukon and Ontario, including the advanced Dublin Gulch project in the Mayo gold district.

StrataGold trades at 55 and has a market capitalization of $40 million based on its 72.3 million shares outstanding.